Barefoot running is fun- no really

A few weeks ago on 9/14/2013, my family and I went to Boston to attend the 2ndAnnual Boston Barefoot Running Festival. There was a whole weekend of activities, but we just wanted to go to the barefoot running workshop and 5K. The father of the modern barefoot movement Barefoot Ken Saxton was going to be there. He is mentioned in “Born to Run” as the one that trained Ted McDonald otherwise known as barefoot Ted. (Wow, it is really hard to write this without using the word barefoot too much, there I go again.)

The workshop and 5K took place along the Charles River. When we arrived in the car, I walked over to the registration table in my Luna sandals and immediately felt out of place as no one had any shoes on. Each registration came with a t-shirt and a nice bag of soaking salts for your feet. I quickly returned my sandals to the car.

Words of wisdom.

Ken started the workshop off by saying it was not a workshop. “Sounds too much like work!”. It was not a clinic either. “Sounds too clinical!”. He then called it a funshop because Barefoot Ken Bob really has fun running barefoot. Ken was not really what I expected. I had sort of thought he would be more of a fanatic. Instead, he was well spoken, and really happy. He wore a propeller hat and a big smile the entire day. Ken is a very accomplished runner who has completed over 80 marathons with only one in shoes. The one in shoes resulted in horrible blisters.

The first point he made was that barefoot running is a hard sell because it is a long term project. It may take years for shoes to cause you injury. That is the tricky thing about repetitive injury; it can take years to cause trouble. I know this first hand. My knees were

Students of the foot.

hurting me after 30 years of walking around with my toes pointed outward instead of straight ahead. I had no idea that I had been slowly hurting myself all those years.

To learn to run sans shoes, Ken recommends finding some pointy rock gravel to start with! Nice smooth grass or pavement should be avoided. With no gravel in the area we settled for a big patch of acorns under a tree. The idea is to teach the feet to distribute weight and to run with low impact. We all practiced standing on acorns and moving about.

The 5K started right after the funshop. I lined up at the start with about 50 other folks with no shoes! I think

Something else to do with the acorns.

there were a few folks in shoes. The exact opposite of my usual race experience as I was in the majority as far as foot wear goes. The race was a blast. To my surprise I actually achieved a 5K PR, and so did Max. I came in 3rd overall and Max won the under 19 age group. Here are the results with some more pictures: